Collected Stories. Carol Shields

it. A Wood had hidden it behind a plaster wall in the city of Berlin. Another Wood had carried it out of Spain in 1936 sewn into the hem of a blanket.

      “Gold can be vulgar,” said Ross. “A scarf has more esprit.”

      “Papa would have insisted she wear the necklace,” said Stanley. He was tired. He’d worked later than usual.

      “All right,” Ross said. “Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and get it out of the vault. But don’t tell Elke. I want to surprise her.”

      On the day of the concert, Elke woke refreshed and alert after what seemed to her to have been a dream-free night. She lay for a few minutes in her bed and tried to remember when she’d last felt so almost happy. Her bedroom was filled with sunny shades of yellow and red—colors she’d chosen herself. The room was quiet. She could lie here as long as she wanted, and no one would come to tell her to get up.

      She was at the hall by noon, before the technicians, before her brothers, before the audience and critics. Today the stage felt friendly; it welcomed the sound of her steps and her soft humming of the music she would play tonight. There was no terror in this.

      “How do you feel?” Ross’s voice sounded sharply at her feet. He was standing, suddenly, at the stairs leading from the front row to the stage. “Did you sleep well?”

      “Woods always sleep well.” Her rare teasing voice.

      “But did you?” He paused, then walked up the stairs to where she was standing. His arms stretched toward her in a curious, beseeching gesture. “I’ve brought you the necklace. I got it from the bank yesterday, just before it closed for the weekend. I was so worried, I hid it underneath my pillow all night.”

      “Are you sure—?” Elke asked.

      “Papa would have wanted you to wear it.”

      “Then I must, of course.”

      “Hurry,” Ross said to Stanley. “We want to be there at least twenty minutes before the program begins.”

      “I should polish my shoes one more time,” said Stanley. The two brothers stood by the door, dressed alike in their black suits and dark ties, the coarse Wood hair brushed back from their foreheads.

      “Your shoes are fine as they are,” Ross said, but he did not want to start a quarrel. He had quarreled with Papa the night he died, a circuitous quarrel about bonds and about the little Monet drawing—what should be done with it. It was just after the quarrel, in fact, that Papa had rushed out into the street and fallen in the path of the motorcyclist.

      “I’ll only be a minute,” Stanley said. He found a soft cloth and rubbed at the toes of his black shoes. Then he pulled at his shirt cuffs and examined them. Elke must be proud of them tonight.

      The air outside was spicy and cold, and the chilly white light of the moon coated the pavement and the tops of parked cars. Ross and Stanley fell into step, left-right, left-right. They were silent, guarding their thoughts and guarding at the same time, it seemed, Elke’s good luck. Stanley wondered if she were anxious, if the little nerves were jumping under the skin of her playing arm, if she were finding it painful to breathe, if her vision were blurred or her thoughts scattered.

      Walking along dark streets always made Stanley think of how piteously men and women struggle to make themselves known to one another, how lonely they can be.

      At least he wasn’t alone. He would never be alone. Thinking this, he stumbled slightly with happiness and bumped up against Ross. The two of them bounced lightly off each other as two eggs will do when boiled in a little pan.

      Elke had persuaded Ross and Stanley to let her eat supper alone. She had eaten two peeled peaches and a bowl of corn flakes, and had drunk a small glass of Scotch. Now she was wandering the corridor beneath the stage.

      There seemed an endless number of rooms: dressing rooms like her own, larger rooms filled with props and costumes, one tiny room with row after row of wigs, several rooms of mops and rags and buckets, then a little library whose shelves were weighted down with scripts and scores, next a delightful room full of instruments in need of repair, and still another room full of instruments beyond repair. This labyrinth of rooms had the surprising and inevitable logic of a dream.

      She glanced at the watch given to her by Papa for her last birthday; the slim gold pointers had moved alarmingly fast. She had only a few minutes to get dressed. Before turning back to her room, where Ross’s clothes lay spread out on a divan waiting for her, Elke opened one last door.

      Costumes, costumes. These must be the costumes for the Saturday matinee performances of fairy tales given to busloads of children; Rapunzel’s gown, Goldilocks’s frilled pinafore, Sleeping Beauty’s nightdress, Cinderella’s slippers, Red Riding Hood’s cape. The costumes were made to last for years of performances, and were lovely enough to enchant the most disenchanted of children. Rapunzel’s gold-green gown, with its square neck and high empire waist, was by far the most beautiful and, as it happened, fit Elke perfectly.